Medicaid Discussion - Essay Sample

Introduction

Often, healthcare in the United States can be costly. It may cost several hundred dollars to make a single doctor's office visit (Galan, 2018). Depending on the type of care provided, an average three-day hospital stay can cost several hundred dollars. Most American citizens may not afford to pay for urgent healthcare services when they get sick because they are not aware of the time they would fall ill. Health insurance comes in to reduce the burden on life's uncertainties regarding healthcare. It reduces the costs to affordable and reasonable amounts. Given this, the paper sets to discuss the Medicaid health insurance program by reviewing a government and non-governmental website. The paper will also identify the gaps or problems within the Medicaid system and how they could be solved. Finally, the discussion on how the debate over universal healthcare policy reflects the history and values of the social welfare in the United States will be featured.

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Medicaid.gov is a federal government website managed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (Medicaid.gov, n.d.). It contains every detail that every American citizen needs to know about the Medicaid insurance policy. A website visitor gets to understand the fact that Medicaid provides health coverage to millions of American citizens including eligible children, low-income adults, pregnant women, people with disabilities, and elderly adults (Medicaid.gov, n.d.). In addition, the states administer the Medicaid program according to federal requirements, whereas both the federal and state governments do the funding.

Medicaid.gov contains links to policy and program topics including Access to Care, Cost Sharing, Eligibility, Enrollment Strategies, Outreach Tools, Prescription Drugs, among others. All the links contain useful links about the Medicaid insurance program (Medicaid.gov, n.d.). Some of the related sites, which users can get quick access to while on the Medicaid.gov website, include HHS.gov, InsureKidsNow.gov, Medicare.gov, Healthcare.gov, CMS.gov, and Data.Medicaid.gov. Essentially, the Medicaid.gov website is a government-owned one-stop shop for all Medicaid related inquiries.

The Medical News Today website is a privately owned website operated by Healthline Media UK Limited, a leading healthcare publishing company (Galan, 2018). It forms a central focus in the paper for its excellent review of the Medicaid insurance policy in the United States. Relevant information about Medicaid as described in the Medical News Today website include the meaning of Medicaid, the services provided by Medicaid, people eligible for the program, and the institutions involved in funding the program (Galan, 2018). The site also contains useful statistics about Medicaid coverage in the United States. For example, Medicaid covers 66.6 million people, according to August 2018 statistics (Galan, 2018). It also outlines the overall insurance rate in the United States where 67.2 percent of the population has private insurance while the rest have government insurance (Ornstein, 2011).

Medicaid is the single most significant health insurance coverage for children and young adults (Ornstein, 2011). The rise in Medicaid spending is an emerging problem that is potentially threatening states' funding of other essential programs such as schools, police, roads, sanitation, and parks. Medicaid is slowly usurping the priorities of most US states and may even worsen in years to come. Apart from covering healthcare costs for children and young adults, the Medicaid program caters nursing home and other long-term care costs for the poor elderly and disabled population (Ornstein, 2011). Statistics indicate that by 2030, the number of elderly Americans above 85 years will increase by 50% to 9 million, translating to a significant increase in Medicaid costs to the country (Samuelson, 2017). In addition, Federal government data indicates that healthcare spending for the elderly is already crowding out the non-elderly expenditures due to the increase in the number of aging Americans.

Since aging is a natural process and the growth of life expectancies desirable for any nation, one of the excellent solutions to the rise in costs is to transfer the Medicaid's long-term care for the elderly to the federal government. The federal government could pay all the funding costs probably by merging with Medicare (Samuelson, 2017). In return, the states could begin paying for all Medicaid costs for children and younger adults in full and surrender all or part of their federal aid for K-12 schools (Samuelson, 2017). If needed, the state governments could cut other federal grants such that there is financial neutrality. The recommendation helps in reducing the funding burden for all stakeholders by devoting elderly care to the federal government while making the care of children and young adults a priority for state governments.

The Affordable Care Act tried to solve the funding issue regarding long-term care to the elderly by introducing the CLASS Act, but it failed (Ornstein, 2011). The CLASS Act was formulated because as more people grow older, there would be an increasing need to provide the aging population with some form of assisted living. In addition, under the CLASS Act, willing Americans had to pay 50 dollars a day for long-term care through a long term insurance plan administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. However, the implementation of the program was unsuccessful since the premiums were expensive and unattractive to most working Americans. The CLASS Act would lead to more money pouring into the healthcare insurance system over the next decades since little would come out in the process, but it would eventually drain the US treasury.

Even though Medicaid costs are becoming burdensome to the state governments, cutting payments going to nursing homes would leave the elderly in worse shape. In short, failure of the CLASS Act, an essential element of the Affordable Care Act, means that the growing Medicaid spending remains an unsolved challenge. In addition, various reformists have come out to propose changes including transferring all long term care costs to the federal government, but politicians would prefer bleeding the states.

The history of social welfare dates back to the colonial period when the colonies imported the British Poor Laws (Segal, 2010). The laws made a distinction between the elderly who were unable to work and the able-bodied unemployed individuals. The unemployed group got employment in workhouses while the elderly got cash and alternative forms of government help. Since the 1800s, many attempts to change how the government deals with the poor have been made. This mirrors the current debate on universal healthcare policy since Medicaid spending is meant for the poor. Moreover, many congressional politicians would want to cut federal spending and reduce budget deficits, but the growing number of aging Americans will even make them increase the budget on Medicaid. Although implementation of the CLASS Act failed, a growing need to have a replacement policy similar to it remains.

References

Galan, N. (2018, November 30). Medicare and Medicaid: What do they do? Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323858.php

Medicaid.gov. (n.d.). Medicaid. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/index.html

Ornstein, N. J. (2011, October 19). CLASS Act failure leaves problem to be solved. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.aei.org/publication/class-act-failure-leaves-problem-to-be-solved/

Samuelson, R. J. (2017, March 19). Medicaid is out of control. Here's how to fix it. Retrieved March 31, 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/medicaid-is-out-of-control-heres-how-to-fix-it/2017/03/19/05167e9e-0b2e-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html?utm_term=.729a78897a38

Segal, E. A. (2010). Social welfare policy and social programs: A values perspective. Australia; Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole.